Story By: Jason Chui ________________
Picture By: Mikey
- Midnight Funeral
I was 17 years old at the time, and I was a promising high school dropout from Brooklyn with a lot of potential. I had just gotten involved with the wrong crowd. There was nothing much a dropout could do besides stay away from truancy, watching television, and play “Counter-Strike” on the computer. I was chatting and surfing the internet in the comfort of my own home while wasting electricity with the television on in the background. My parents were asleep. I felt bad for them dealing with my situation in particular because I was an only child. They were Chinese immigrants that barely knew any English; it was really all on me to bring a future to our family. Although they were upset that I was a dropout, they still had hope for me. I didn’t want to add any more disappointment to their hopes.
It was around 1 a.m. when I received an instant message from a good friend of mine from high school. His name was Michael. He was a young lyricist aspiring to be a rapper. He was of Asian descent. He claimed he was Vietnamese although he was half Chinese as well. I guess his claims helped him to blend in with his Vietnamese crowd. It kind of annoyed me because it seemed like he never acknowledged anything about himself being Chinese, as if he was embarrassed about his Chinese heritage. But nonetheless, he was considered as a “cool” guy. We developed a friendship through another friend. He had my back in the school fights and we hung out a lot. He was also a high school dropout like myself.
“YO BRO” flashed on my monitor. I leaned over, paying a bit more attention as I sensed urgency from capitalized instant messages.
“Yeah what’s up?” I replied.
“YO MAN CAN U DO ME A FAVOR BRO PLEASE?”
God, I hated those questions. No, it wasn’t the fact that I didn’t want to help him. It’s actually more because I had no idea what the favor was. I figured, “If I say no, he’ll think of me as a jerk, if I say yes and then change my mind, it could be even worse as he would label me a scumbag. If I just say yes and commit, then there’s no turning back.” So being the smart analytical person that I was at the time, I thought really long and hard about what I was going to say to him.
“What’s up? What’s the favor?” I asked.
“My dog just died, bro. Do you have a place to bury him? Like your backyard or something?”
“Hell no.” I thought. “No way am I going to step out of my comfortable and cozy room, change out of my pajamas, and agree to be in a position to get dirty and to touch a dead animal… especially in my own backyard! I am an avid neat freak, and it’s also cold outside. It’s the middle of the night! Are you seriously asking me for a favor like this?!”
“No I don’t, sorry man.” I answered.
“Please bro, I really need your help, I’m begging you. I need to bury him tonight. I can’t take him to the vet.”
What the heck was I supposed to say in this situation? I really hated to be mean, especially when my friends were in desperate situations. I knew that he would have agreed to help me if it was the other way around. I guessed that maybe this was an opportunity to show my loyalty to my friend, and that I was someone that he could depend on.
“I know a place at this park by the train tracks where there’s a hill leading up to a dirt trail in between the train tracks and handball courts,” I suggested. “It’s a few blocks away; if we are going to do this, let’s not waste anymore time.” If I was really going, I wanted just to get this stunt over with and go to bed. I gave my suggestion to him, praying that he would deny it and that I wouldn’t have to help anymore.
“Alright, I’ll be over in a few minutes. Get ready. Get some shovels.”
“Damn it.” I thought. As I was getting dressed, I was doing a lot of regretting. “Why did I say I would help? What if we get caught by cops? Was this all worth it?” Looking back now, I could blame the marijuana that I smoked in those days. Maybe it impaired my judgment. But honestly, it would have just made me lazier instead. It must have been being up all day that affected my ability to think straight.
I had to think of a way to leave my house without my parents waking up and seeing me walking out carrying two shovels. They already thought that I was affiliated with gangs when I really wasn’t. The last thought that I wanted going through their minds was an idea of me burying a dead body in the middle of the night. I walked out of my room as I got a phone call. I didn’t pick it up. I knew who it was and what it was for. My house was dark and as I was walking to the door, all I could think of was staying out of trouble.
I walked out of my door keeping the shovels in front of me, just in case my parents were watching from behind. There he was, ironically driving in a Mercedes Benz when he didn’t want to pay for a professional dog funeral. I loaded the tools in his backseat and got into the passenger seat in the front. We slapped hands, signifying our bond and friendship. I gave him directions to the nearby park.
“Dog’s in the trunk?” I asked.
“Yeah” he replied.
“What happened to him?
“I don’t know man. He was just making noises and lying lifeless. I grabbed him and I knew he was going. So I cried and just held him until his last breath.”
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy and his dog. We reached our destination and found parking near the playground, or as it was soon to be called, the burial grounds. It was dark out and the only things illuminating the night were the city’s light poles and cars with reflector lights bouncing off any light that came their way. As I got out of the car, I craned my neck in several directions, seeing if anyone was watching us. Paranoia and fear rushed through my blood, as I knew I was in a situation I shouldn’t have been. I opened the back door to grab the shovels because I knew sure as hell that I was not going to carry that dead dog.
He reached over to the bottom of his trunk and lifted it, revealing a makeshift dog casket out of a cardboard box, the size of a small desk. I sniffed the air, to see if it smelled. Then, I remembered that the decomposing process doesn’t start immediately after death. He grabbed the box, and we went across the street to the dirt trail outside of the park that led to the hill of dirt where we were going to dig. Again, I looked around to see if anyone was watching. There was no one, not even oncoming cars on the road. Once on top of the hill, I felt safer being hidden by a wall, train tracks, and with us blending in to the night in dark clothing. He laid down the box and we began to dig.
“Here I am, shovel in hand, with my friend. There’s barely any visibility. The moonlight was over our heads. The streetlights were now eye level as we were on top of a hill, there’s a dead body in a box next to us.” To me, it felt like a scene straight out of “Goodfellas”, an Italian mob movie, when they had to get rid of a body of someone they had killed. We had a hard time digging because the ground was composed of rock, dirt, grass and roots. The plasticity of the shovel was no bonus for the rigorous digging process. There we were for fifteen minutes straight, digging like it was the second gold rush.
“Dude this isn’t working, we’re digging but the hole isn’t getting any deeper.”
“Let’s try to see if the box fits. Is the hole deep enough?” I asked.
“I don’t know, let’s try it out,” he said.
By now we were pretty exhausted. For me, the fatigue had kicked in as a result of being up all day and the fact that it was around 2 a.m.
“Screw it we’re done. Let’s get outta here.” He said.
I let out a sigh of relief as I didn’t really care if we were digging a hole that was deep enough at all. I didn’t even care at all if the box was just left there to rot. I didn’t care who would find it and how bad the stench would smell in a matter of days. The twenty minutes of digging felt like an hour. We were both tired and knew that the box wasn’t going to fit in the hole. So we did what any tired and lazy human beings would do. We “swept the dust under the carpet.” We just dug dirt and threw it on top of the box trying to conceal the whiteness and the squared-shape of the makeshift casket. We found branches, twigs and leaves that would camouflage the box with the ground and threw them on top of the box. With any available energy finally depleted, the box was still clearly visible, like a mosquito bite right in the middle of someone’s forehead.
There it was, our half-assed job looked like a complete joke, but I wasn’t upset. I was just happy to go home. As I walked down carefully down the hill back to street level, I noticed my friend still there probably saying his last words or mentally going through the memories he shared with his dog. His dog was like family to him. I on the other hand never knew of that compassion and that understanding of what it was like to lose a dog, as I had never owned one. I was an only child, probably spoiled, but I took loyalty seriously. That was the defining moment of the night. When he spoke to his dog was when I realized what true brotherhood meant. It meant helping a friend in need even when I didn’t want to. Maybe that was why I went that night to help Michael bury his dog. I learned that night that even though I was an only child with no one to really relate to, I saw that the closest thing to having a brother or sister was to be someone that my friends could depend on. I wanted to be someone that my friends would and could come to for help. This was my way of expressing brotherhood. Besides, how many people in this world can say that they had a funeral in the middle of the night?
